Likelihood to Recommend

Accounting by Wave

Wave is free to use, and they have some premium features you can pay for. For someone just starting out as a small business, freelancer or independent contractor, this is a Godsend. You can look professional, have something easy to manage, and yet also have excellent records come the end of the year. You won't spend a bunch of time having to learn the program, it's very intuitive and you get a host of great features that will make getting paid easy.

Xero

It works very well for multi-user environments where users are in different physical locations. Also it has a very good API that allows for robust integrations with external systems. These 2 areas where our key criteria when choosing a new accounting system a few years ago. Our specific accounting needs are very basic so really any accounting system would handle our accounting needs. Ease of use, multi-user access from different locations and a good API where what we needed and xero delivers.

Billing bypass

Client template cloning

Single sign-on

Configurable client onboarding questions

Cross-client workflow management

Accounting by Wave

8.0

Xero

8.4

Industry-specific versioning

Accounting by Wave

8.0

Xero

8.2

Legacy system data migration

Accounting by Wave

8.0

Xero

7.7

Pros

Invoices are so easy to execute. Whether they are one-off or recurring, fixed or variable, single item or multiple line entries, they come out looking professional, polished and they get sent without any fuss. Put your client's info on them, add your logo, describe the services, add notes, set due dates, etc. all without cracking an abacus.

It's a little thing but I love how the estimates feature integrates with Invoices. You start by making an estimate for a client, with a defined expiry date. Once they accept, you can convert that estimate immediately into an Invoice and set it up to send.

Built-in payment processing is great. I don't have to worry about Paypal or Stripe or anything, Wave just handles my client's credit cards so I don't have to do a thing. They even have recurring billing for my retainer clients!

Cons

My biggest request is that they add a way to link invoice payments with the bank deposits . When a payment is made through Wave, they show the income and it is marked with the invoice number, but when they transfer the money into the bank, the credit is not tied to the invoice(s). You have to figure out by hand and delete the transaction from the bank to prevent getting double credit on it

It would be good to have a field for CC email on each customer. Currently you have to add any CC when sending.

Using an accounting system in a web browser versus a standalone app can be a little clunky when it comes to navigation or having multiple windows open at once. This is more a function of using a web browser then a knock against xero itself. For us this is just a minor annoyance having come from a desktop based system before.

Simplest answer - it works for us. For our own company, I don't think we are looking for any options other than Xero right now. Everyone in our company uses it - Finance uses it for bookkeeping and follow ups, Sales for quotes through to invoicing customers, we all use it for individual expense claims. So far so good! No reason to change.

Usability

Accounting by Wave5.3

Based on 4 answers

I am a professional bookkeeper and I have no problems using Wave and all of it's features. I can see that certain individuals who have no accounting knowledge might struggle with a few different features and entries, but that is why Wave has an emphasis in connecting users to Wave Pro's who will walk them through things

We have been actively using and 100% Xero based for our ecommerce accounting practice for over 4 years. There has on been one real outage for more than 5 minutes. Xero was open and transparent about the outage, what they were doing to resolve the issue, and provided 15 minute updates. Showing how they care about their customers and partners. Plus, showing that their customers care too, were understanding, and went surfing or in our case took a nap. Couldn't run our business without Xero as a partner.

All of Xero's training is online and available for anyone (business owner or accountants) to learn and become experts in their system. There is a range of content from product training to real world webinars from their partners. Xero is beautiful accounting software and their training is the same.

Xero hits our "maximum point" on the curves of simplicity, usability, and feature set. In my opinion it is by far the best in class, and the only reason it hasn't taken over Quickbooks entirely is that industry-standard products, no matter how inferior, are difficult to dislodge. Quickbooks needs to go away. Xero is amazing.

Rating for Public Practice CPAs

Accounting by Wave8.0

Based on 8 answers

I rated the software an 7 due to its ease of use. It would be rated higher, but I consider this to be a niche product instead of a go to product for all clients. This is the software to use if you want an inexpensive entry level software for an owner managed business.

Processing efficiency, accessibility, focus on client servicing and not on network administration, customer service and account management focused on helping your practice grow, innovative, continuous improvement on solutions focused on accountants. And most importantly, it makes you be cool!!!